


Lean Into The Wind

by Unread



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Carnivale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 02:50:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21468850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unread/pseuds/Unread
Summary: He makes many wishes, that first sunrise, but they all boil down to the same one.
Relationships: Thomas Blanky/Dr Alexander McDonald
Comments: 9
Kudos: 32
Collections: The Terror Rarepair Week 2019





	Lean Into The Wind

**Author's Note:**

> For The Terror Rarepair Week. A late one for Sadderday.

It’s Thomas who finds him. Later, he’ll wish it’d been someone else. He’ll wish he hadn’t seen how compressed into the filthy ice his body had been, from the force of the panicked men stampeding over him. He’ll wish he hadn’t been the one to turn him over and look into his dead face, still painted white like a clown, features fixed into a rictus of fear and agony. He’ll wish he hadn’t known that the blood oozing from his torso had frozen into the ground beneath him, so that when Thomas turned him it had sounded like something tearing.

He makes many wishes, that first sunrise, but they all boil down to the same one. And they are all in vain. There is nothing except for this single, cruel reality.

Alexander has been split open sternum to groin, like a fish in a fishmonger’s window. It takes Thomas a long time to start wondering on the _ why _ of it, as he kneels crookedly on the ground, staring at the body in the smoky half-light. Two marines come by and start to pick Alexander up and Thomas almost protests, but instead struggles upright and follows them, like a child totting after its mother. It’s when they place Alexander in a row of charred bodies, that he truly begins to wonder. Alexander doesn’t look like _ them _.

Goodsir is there, and he lets out a cry when he sees the new arrival. He looks at Thomas with such feeling in his eyes, such regret, that Thomas wants to...he doesn’t know. Punch him, perhaps. They were friends, Goodsir and Alexander. It’s only natural for the man to grieve over his friend. But what did that make _ them _? Not friends. Not colleagues. Nothing but two people who’d shared the secrets of each other's bodies for a time. He hadn’t the right to grieve, not openly.

“He’s been cut,” Thomas says. It feels like trying to talk without a tongue, the words weighted like lead.

Goodsir frowns, sees the blood, and then pulls open Alexander’s shirt to bare his chest. The white of his skin against the red of the gore is almost blinding. Thomas wants to shield his eyes from it, turn away, but he stands firm. Even takes a step closer. Perhaps he wants it to blind him.

“A small knife, I would say.” Goodsir is poking his fingers into the open seam of flesh and organs. “It must have been an accident.”

“Some accident.” His voice still seems odd, as if he’s on a seabed trying to talk to the shore.

Goodsir’s expression is helpless, his eyes darting over the other bodies and their varied manners of death. “There’s no way to know how it happened. Not with...everything.” He looks up at Thomas, and frowns. “Are you quite alright, Mr Blanky?”

“I’m fine,” Thomas says. He has hardly a mind for the others; his eyes keep being drawn back to Alexander. He wonders if this is selfish of him.

“He was a good man,” Goodsir says, gently. “A kind man.”

“Aye,” is all he says in return. He doesn’t like the past tense of it.

Suddenly Goodsir calls out, “Shouldn’t you be headed back to _ Terror _, Mr Hickey?” His voice is sharp as a knife, a startling contrast to his usually soft tone.

It momentarily shatters Thomas's fixation, and he looks up to see Hickey lurking nearby them, his eyes roaming over the dead men laid out. He gives Goodsir a tip of his hat, a faint smirk playing on his face, and then walks off -- but not before having one last glance behind him at the bodies. Mayhaps he’s wondering if a friend had been lost, or mayhaps he was just wanting to spectate. From what Thomas knew of the man, the latter was more likely. No concern of his. He turns his attention back to Alexander, and Mr Hickey vanishes from his thoughts as if he never existed.

Goodsir lets out an irritated sigh, and then begins to carefully button Alexander’s torn shirt back up as best he can.

And that’s when he sees it. That, there. A mark on Alexander’s collarbone. Thomas finds himself reaching down, almost involuntarily, and clenching his hand around Goodsir’s wrist to halt him from covering it further.

It’s the bruise he had sucked into Alexander’s neck, only hours before. It makes his reality truly split -- that one, where he could kiss Alexander’s warm skin and expect a response, a reaction, a returning touch -- and this one. Where there was nothing but frozen skin and eyes of glass and a bluing bruise on a dead man.

“Mr Blanky?” Goodsir says, ever so softly. There's an inkling of realisation in his voice, but Thomas finds that he cares not about discovery. Mayhaps he even wants it known. “Oh Mr Blanky, I’m sorry.”

Thomas meets his eyes, and it’s then he realises his face is wet, dampness that is already starting to freeze in the wind. He hasn’t cried since he was a lad. He wipes his face, looks at Alexander again, and wishes.

**Author's Note:**

> [My tumblr :D](https://lookslikeaquentinblakedrawing.tumblr.com/)


End file.
